Lunch poems

THE POCKET POETS SERIES

ank O'Hara

Lunch poems /
PS3529.H28 L8

O'Hara, Frank. ^^^-Res.

NEW COLLEGE 'of ^^

O'Hara, Frank
Lunch Poems

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Res*
PS

3529
H2 8
L8

O'Hara, Frank.

Lunch poems / Frank 0» Hara. San
F^'anclsco : City Lights Books, cl964.

74 p» ; 16 cm. (The Pocket poets
series ; no. 19)

#2355 DC $2.00.

Perm. Res. : #10185 Gift $ . .

I. Title

17 SEP 91

II. Se ri e s

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5875260

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64-8689

LUNCH
POEMS

Frank O'Hara

T

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
The Pocket Poets Series : Number 19

11

O 1964 by Frank OHara

^ Ninth printing: March 1984

ISBN: 0-87286-035-3

LC Card Number: 64-8689

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti &
Nancy J. Peters and pubHshed at the City Lights Bookstore,
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, California 94133

CONTENTS

Music

Alma ...

On Rachmaninoff's Birthday

Poem ...

On the Way to the San Remo

2 Poems from the Ohara Monogatari

A Step Away from Them . . .

Cambridge ...

Poem ...

Three Airs

Image of the Buddha Preaching

Song ...

The Day Lady Died

Poem

Poem

Naphtha

Personal Poem

Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan

Rhapsody

Hotel particulier

Cornkind

How To Get There

A Little Travel Diary

Five Poems ...

Ave Maria ...

Pistachio Tree at Chateau Noir

At Kamin's Dance Bookshop

Steps

Mary Desti's Ass

St. Paul and All That

and J

ean-Paul

Memoir of Sergei O

Yesterday Down at the Canal

Poem en forme de saw

For the Chinese New Year & For Bill Berkson

Poem ...

Galanta

Fantasy

59

61
62
64
70
71
73

to Joseph LeSueur

Some of these poems have appeared previously in Yugen, Ever-
green Review, Poetry, Locus Solus, The Beat Scene, Big Table,
Signal, Nugget, The Floating Bear, C, The New American
Poetry, and City Lights Journal, to all of whom the author and
publisher offer their thanks.

MUSIC

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35c, it's so meaningless to eat !
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,

I must tighten my belt.
It's like a locomotive on the march, the season

of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter's
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon ! in the foggy autumn.
As they're putting up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on !

But no more fountains and no more rain,

and the stores stay open terribly late.

1953

ALMA

"Est-elle almee? . . . aux premieres heures bleues
Se detruira-t-elle comme les fleurs feues. . . /'

— Rimbaud.

1

The sun, perhaps three of them, one black one red, you know,
and her dancing all the time, fanning the purple sky getting
purple, her fancy white skin quite unoriental to the dirty child-
ren's round eyes standing in circles munching muffins, the cock-
roaches like nuggets half hid in the bran. Boy! how are you,
Prester John ? the smile of the river, so searching, so enamelled.

2

What mention of the King ?
the spinning wheel still turns,
the apples rot to the singing.
Ale est e on winter sojourns

is nice at Nice. Wander,
my dear sacred Pontiff, do dare
to murder minutely and ponder
what is the bloody affair

inside the heart of the weak
dancer, whose one toe is worth
inestimable, the gang, the cheek
of it ! it's too dear, her birth

amidst the acorns with nails
stuck through them by passionate

parents, castanets ! Caucasian tales !
their prodigality proportionate :

"Sacred Heart, oh Heart so sick,
make Detroit more wholly thine,
all with greeds and scabs so thick
that Judas Priest must make a sign."

Thus he to bed and we to rise

and Alma singing like a loon.

Her dancing toenails in her eyes.

Her pa was dead on the River Gaboon.

3

Detroit was founded on the great near waterways next to Canada
which was friendly and immediately gained for herself the appel-
lation "the Detroit of Thermopylaes", a name which has stuck to
this day wherever ballroom dancing is held in proper esteem. Let
me remind you of that great wrist movement, the enjambement
schizophrene, a particularly satisfying variation of which may be
made by adding a little tomato paste. Great success. While in
Detroit accused of starting the Chicago fire. Millions of roses
from Russians. Alma had come a long way, she opened a jewelry
shop, her name became a household word, she'd invented an
arch-supporter.

How often she thought of her father ! the castle, the kitchen-
garden, the hollihocks and the mill stream beyond curving gently
as a parenthesis. Many a bitter tear was shed by her on the
boards of this theatre as she pondered the inscrutable meagerness
of divine Providence, always humming, always shifting a little,
never missing a beat. She guested one season at the height of her
nostalgia with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in Salammbo; her

10

father seemed very close in all that oriental splendor of bamboo
and hotel palms and stale sweat and bracelets, an engagement of
tears. In the snow, in her white fox fur wraps, how more beauti-
ful than Mary Garden !

4

Onward to the West. *'Where I came from,
where I'm going. Indian country." Gold.
Oh say can you see Alma. The darling
of Them. All her friends were artists.
They alone have memories. They alone
love flowers. They alone give parties
and die. Poor Alma. They alone.

She died,
and it was as if all the jewels in the world
had heaved a sigh. The seismograph
at Fordham University registered, for once,
a spiritual note. How like a sliver
in her own short fat muscular foot.
She loved the Western World, though
there are some who say she isn't really dead.

1953

n
ON RACHMANINOFFS BIRTHDAY

Quick ! a last poem before I go

off my rocker. Oh Rachmaninoff !

Onset, Massachusetts. Is it the fig-newton

playing the horn ? Thundering windows

of hell, will your tubes ever break

into powder ? Oh my palace of oranges,

junk shop, staples, umber, basalt;

I'm a child again when I was really

miserable, a grope pizzicato. My pocket

of rhinestone, yoyo, carpenter's pencil,

amethyst, hypo, campaign button,

is the room full of smoke ? Shit

on the soup, let it burn. So it's back.

You'll never be mentally sober.

1953

12

POEM

I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks
and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk.
Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back ?

Now mounting the steps
I enter my new home full
of grey radiators and glass
ashtrays full of wool.

Against the winter I must get a samovar
embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos
to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind,

a little bit of the blue
summer air will come back
as the steam chuckles in
the monster's steamy attack

and I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears. I don't suppose I'll ever get
to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least.

My new home will be full
of wood, roots and the like,
while I pace in a turtleneck
sweater, repairing my bike.

I watched the palisades shivering in the snow

of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure.

Once I destroyed a man's idea of himself to have him.

13

If I'd had a samovar then
I'd have made him tea
and as hyacinths grow from
a pot he would love me

and my charming room of tea cosies full of dirt
which is why I must travel, to collect the leaves.
O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

though it is cold and you
are made of fire and wood !
I lift your lid and mountains
return, that I am good.

The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped
on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind
the theater where my play is echoed by dying voices.

I am really a woodcarver
and my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move.

1954

14

ON THE WAY TO SAN REMO

The black ghinkos snarl their way up

the moon growls at each bhnking window

the apartment houses climb deafeningly into the purple

A bat hisses northwards

the perilous steps lead to a grate

suddenly the heat is bearable

The cross-eyed dog scratches a worn patch of pavement

his right front leg is maimed in the shape of a V

there's no trace of his nails on the street a woman cajoles

She is very old and dirty
she whistles her filthy hope
that it will rain tonight

Tlie 6th Avenue bus trunk-lumbers sideways
it is full of fat people who cough as at a movie
they eat each other's dandruff in the flickering glare

The moon passes into clouds
so hurt by the street lights
of your glance oh my heart

The act of love is also passing like a subway bison
through the paper-littered arches of the express tracks
the sailor sobers he feeds pennies to the peanut machines

Though others are in the night
far away lips upon a dusty armpit
the nostrils are full of tears

15

High fidelity reposed in a box a hand on the windowpane
the sweet calm the violin strings tie a young man's hair
the bright black eyes pin far away their smudged curiosity

Yes you are foolish smoking
the bars are for rabbits
who wish to outlive the men

1954

16

2 POEMS FROM THE OHARA MONOGATARI

1

My love is coming in a glass
the blood of the Bourbons

saxophone or cornet
qu'importe ou?

green of glass flowers dans le Kentucky

and always the same handkerchief
at the same nose of damask

turning up my extravagant collar
tossing my scarf about my neck

the Baudelaire of Kyoto's never-ending pureness
is he cracked in the head ?

2

After a long trip to a shrine
in wooden clogs so hard on the muscles
the tea is bitter and the breasts are hard
so much terrace for one evening

there is no longer no ocean

I don't see the ocean under niy stilts

as I poke along

17

hands on ankles feet on wrists

naked in thought

like a whip made from sheerest stockings

the radio is on the cigarette is puffed upon

by the pleasures of rolling in a bog

some call the Milky Way

in far-fetched Occidental lands above the trees

where dwell the amusing skulls

1954

18

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM

It's my lunch hour, so I go

for a walk among the hum-colored

cabs. First, down the sidewalk

where laborers feed their dirty

glistening torsos sandwiches

and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets

on. They protect them from falling

bricks, I guess. Then onto the

avenue where skirts are flipping

above heels and blow up over

grates. The sun is hot, but the

cabs stir up the air. I look

at bargains in wristwatches. There

are cats playing in sawdust.

On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks : he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks : it is 12 :40 of
a Thursday.

Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, e bell' attrice.

19

And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

1956

20

CAMBRIDGE

It is still raining and the yellow-green cotton fruit

looks silly round a window giving out on winter trees

with only three drab leaves left. The hot plate works,

it is the sole heat on earth, and instant coffee. I

put on my warm corduroy pants, a heavy maroon sweater,

and wrap myself in my old maroon bathrobe. Just like Pasternak

in Marburg (they say Italy and France are colder, but

I'm sure that Germany's at least as cold as this) and,

lacking the Master's inspiration, I may freeze to death

before I can get out into the white rain. I could have left

the window closed last night ? But that's where health

comes from ! His breath from the Urals, drawing me into flame

like a forgotten cigarette. Burn ! this is not negligible,

being poetic, and not feeble, since it's sponsored by

the greatest living Russian poet at incalculable cost.

Across the street there is a house under construction,

abandoned to the rain. Secretly, I shall go to work on it.

1956

21
POEM

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream

in it, and a phone call to the beyond

which doesn't seem to be coming any nearer.

" Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days "

on the poetry of a new friend

my life held precariously in the seeing

hands of others, their and my impossibilities.

Is this love, now that the first love

has finally died, where there were no impossibilities ?

1956

22

THREE AIRS

to Norman Bluhm
1.

So many things in the air ! soot,
elephant balls, a Chinese cloud
which is entirely collapsed, a cat
swung by its tail

and the senses
of the dead which are banging about
inside my tired red eyes

2.

In the deeps there is a little bird
and it only hums, it hums of fortitude

and temperance, it is managing a foundry

how firmly it must grasp things ! tear them
out of the slime and then, alas ! it mischievously

drops them into the cauldron of hideousness

there is already a sunset naming

the poplars which see only, watery, themselves

23

3.

Oh to be an angel (if there were any !), and go

straight up into the sky and look around and then come down

not to be covered with steel and aluminum
glaringly ugly in the pure distances and clattering and

buckling, wheezing

but to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible,
the iridescent darknesses beyond,

silent, listening to
the air becoming no air becoming air again

1958

24

IMAGE OF THE BUDDHA PREACHING

I am very happy to be here at the Villa Hiigel

and Prime Minister Nehru has asked me to greet the people of

Essen
and to tell you how powerfully affected we in India
have been by Germany's philosophy, traditions and mythology
though our lucidity and our concentration on archetypes
puts us in a class by ourself

" for in this world of storm and stress "
— 5,000 years of Indian art ! just think of it, oh Essen !
is this a calmer region of thought, " a reflection of the mind
through the ages " ?

Max Miiller, " primus inter pares " among

Indologists
remember our byword, Mokshamula, I rejoice in the fact of 900

exhibits

I deeply appreciate filling the gaps, oh Herr Doktor Heinrich

Goetz !
and the research purring onward in Pakistan and Ceylon and

Afghanistan
soapstone, terracotta- Indus, terracotta-Maurya, terracotta Sunga,
terracotta-Andhra, terracotta fragments famous Bharhut

Stupa
Kushana, Ghandara, Gupta, Hindu and Jain, Secco, Ajanta,

Villa Hugel !

Anglo-German trade will prosper by Swansea-Mannheim

friendship
waning now the West Wall by virtue of two rolls per capita
and the flagship BERLIN is joining its "white fleet" on the Rhine

25

though better schools and model cars are wanting, still still oh

Essen
Nataraja dances on the dwarf
and unlike their fathers
Germany's highschool pupils love the mathematics

which is hopeful of a new delay in terror
I don't think

1959

26

SONG

Is it dirty

does it look dirty

that's what you think of in the city

does it just seem dirty

that's what you think of in the city

you don't refuse to breathe do you

someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive, is he really, yes. very
he's attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes

that's what you think of in the city

run your finger along your no-moss mind

that's not a thought that's soot

and you take a lot of dirt off someone

is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly

you don't refuse to breathe do you

1959

27
THE DAY LADY DIED

It is 12 : 20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4 : 19 in Easthampton

at 7 : 15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don't know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or I.es Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the John door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mai Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

1959

28

POEM

Wouldn't it be funny

if The Finger had designed us

to shit just once a week ?

all week long we'd get fatter

and fatter and then on Sunday morning

while everyone's in church

ploop !

1959

29
POEM

Khrushchev is coming on the right day !

the cool graced light
is pushed off the enormous glass piers by hard wind
and everything is tossing, hurrying on up

this country
has everything but politesse, a Puerto Rican cab driver says
and five different girls I see

look like Piedie Gimbel
v^ith her blonde hair tossing too,

as she looked w^hen I pushed
her little daughter on the swing on the lawn it was also windy

last night we went to a movie and came out,

lonesco is greater
than Beckett, Vincent said, that's what I think, blueberry blintzes
and Khrushchev was probably being carped at

in Washington, no

politesse
Vincent tells me about his mother's trip to Sweden

Hans tells us
about his father's life in Sweden, it sounds like Grace Hartigan's
painting Sweden

so I go home to bed and names drift through my

head
Purgatorio Merchado, Gerhard Schwartz and Gaspar Gonzales,
all unknown figures of the early morning as I go to work

where does the evil of the year go

when September takes New York
and turns it into ozone stalagmites

30

deposits of light
so I get back up
make coffee, and read Francois Villon, his life, so dark

New York seems blinding and my tie is blowing up the street
I wish it would blow off

though it is cold and somewhat warms

my neck
as the train bears Khrushchev on to Pennsylvania Station
and the light seems to be eternal
and joy seems to be inexorable
I am foolish enough always to find it in wind

1959

31
NAPHTHA

Ah Jean Dubuffet

when you think of him

doing his mihtary service in the Eiffel Tower

as a meteorologist

in 1922

you know how wonderful the 20th Century

can be

and the gaited Iroquois on the girders

fierce and unflinching-footed

nude as they should be

slightly empty

like a Sonia Delaunay

there is a parable of speed

somewhere behind the Indians' eyes

they invented the century with their horses

and their fragile backs

which are dark

we owe a debt to the Iroquois

and to Duke Ellington

for playing in the buildings when they are built

we don't do much ourselves

but fuck and think

of the haunting Metro

and the one who didn't show up there

while we were waiting to become part of our century

just as you can't make a hat out of steel

and still wear it

who wears hats anyway

it is our tribe's custom

to beguile

32

how are you feeling in ancient September

I am feeling like a truck on a wet highway

how can you

you were made in the image of god

I was not

I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver

and Jean Dubuffet painting his cows

"with a likeness burst in the memory"

apart from love (don't say it)

I am ashamed of my century

for being so entertaining

but I have to smile

1959

33

PERSONAL POEM

Now when I walk around at lunchtime
I have only two charms in my pocket
an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me
and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case
when I was in Madrid the others never
brought me too much luck though they did
help keep me in New York against coercion
but now I'm happy for a time and interested

I walk through the luminous humidity
passing the House of Seagram with its wet
and its loungers and the construction to
the left that closed the sidewalk if
I ever get to be a construction worker
I'd like to have a silver hat please
and get to Moriarty's where I wait for
LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and
shaker the last five years my batting average
is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in
and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12
times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop
a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible
disease but we don't give her one we
don't like terrible diseases, then

34

we go eat some fish and some ale it's

cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling

we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like

Henry James so much we like Herman Melville

we don't want to be in the poets' walk in

San Francisco even we just want to be rich

and walk on girders in our silver hats

I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is

thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi

and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go

back to work happy at the thought possibly so

1959

35

ADIEU TO NORMAN,
BON JOUR TO JOAN AND JEAN-PAUL

It is 12 : 10 in New York and I am wondering

if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch

ah lunch ! I think I am going crazy

what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up

at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's

I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems

at Joan's studio for a new book by Grove Press

which they will probably not print

but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night

wondering whether you are any good or not

and the only decision you can make is that you did it

yesterday I looked up the rue Fremicourt on a map

and was happy to find it like a bird

flying over Paris et ses environs

which unfortunately did not include Seine-et-Oise

which I don't know
as well as a number of other things
and Allen is back talking about god a lot
and Peter is back not talking very much
and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth's
although he is coming to lunch with Norman
I suspect he is making a distinction
well, who isn't

I wish I were reeling around Paris

instead of reeling around New York

I wish I weren't reeling at all

it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured

36

we are all happy and young and toothless

it is the same as old age

the only thing to do is simply continue

is that simple

yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do

can you do it

yes, you can because it is the only thing to do

blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues

the Seine continues

the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all

the Bar Americain continues to be French

de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus

Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb

and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think !)

and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes

and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting)

and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it

and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers

and people under them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything

continues to be possible
Rene Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it

1959

37
RHAPSODY

515 Madison Avenue

door to heaven ? portal i

stopped realities and eternal licentiousness 1

or at least the jungle of impossible eagerness \

your marble is bronze and your lianas elevator cables ,

swinging from the myth of ascending .

I would join ;

or declining the challenge of racial attractions

they zing on (into the lynch, dear friends)

while everywhere love is breathing draftily

like a doorway linking 53rd with 54th

the east-bound with the west-bound traffic by 8,000,000s

o midtown tunnels and the tunnels, too, of Holland I

where is the summit where all aims are clear

the pin-point light upon a fear of lust

as agony's needlework grows up around the unicorn

and fences him for milk- and yoghurt-work

when I see Gianni I know he's thinking of John Ericson

playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd or Elizabeth Taylor

taking sleeping-pills and Jane thinks of Manderley

and Irkutsk while I cough lightly in the smog of desire

and my eyes water achingly imitating the true blue

38

a sight of Manahatta in the towering needle
multi-faceted insight of the fiy in the stringless labyrinth
Canada plans a higher place than the Empire State Building
I am getting into a cab at 9th Street and 1st Avenue
and the Negro driver tells me about a $120 apartment
"where you can't walk across the floor after 10 at night
not even to pee, cause it keeps them awake downstairs"
no, I don't like that "well, I didn't take it"
perfect in the hot humid morning on my way to work
a little supper-club conversation for the mill of the gods

you were there always and you know all about these things

as indifferent as an encyclopedia with your calm brown eyes

it isn't enough to smile when you run the gauntlet

you've got to spit like Niagara Falls on everybody or

Victoria Falls or at least the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid

as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar

that is what you learn in the early morning passing

Madison Avenue
where you've never spent any time and stores eat up light

I have always wanted to be near it

though the day is long (and I don't mean Madison Avenue)

lying in a hammock on St. Mark's Place sorting my poems

in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island

they are coming and we holy ones must go

is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically

belong to the enormous bliss of American death

1959

39
HOTEL PARTICULIER

How exciting it is

not to be at Port Lligat
or learning Portuguese in Bilbao so you can go to Brazil

Erik Satie made a great mistake learning Latin
the Brise Marine wasn't written in Sanskrit, baby

I had a teacher one whole summer who never told me anything

and it was wonderful

and then there is the Bibliotheque Nationale, cuspidors,
glasses, anxiety

you don't get crabs that way,
and what you don't know will hurt somebody else

how clear the air is, how low the moon, how flat the sun,
et cetera,

just so you don't coin a phrase that changes
can be "rung" on

like les neiges d'antan
and that sort of thing (oops !), (roll me over) !

is this the hostel where the lazy and fun- loving
start up the mountain?

1960

40

CORNKIND

So the rain falls

it drops all over the place

and where it finds a little rock pool

it fills it up with dirt

and the com grows

a green Bette Davis sits under it

reading a volume of William Morris

oh fertility ! beloved of the Western world

you aren't so popular in China

though they fuck too

and do I really want a son

to carry on my idiocy past the Homed Gates

poor kid a staggering load

yet it can happen casually

and he lifts a little of the load each day

as I become more and more idiotic

and grows to be a strong strong man

and one day carries as I die

my final idiocy and the very gates

into a future of his choice

but what of William Morris

what of you Million Worries

what of Bette Davis in

AN EVENING WITH WILLIAM MORRIS

or THE WORLD OF SAMUEL GREENBERG

41

what of Hart Crane

what of phonograph records and gin

what of "what of"

you are of me, that's what

and that's the meaning of fertility

hard and moist and moaning

1960

42

HOW TO GET THERE

White the October air, no snow, easy to breathe

beneath the sky, lies, Ues everywhere writhing and gasping

clutching and tangUng, it is not easy to breathe

hes building their tendrils into dim figures

who disappear down corridors in west-side apartments

into childhood's proof of being wanted, not abandoned, kidnapped

betrayal staving off loneliness, I see the fog lunge in

and hide it

where are you?

here I am on the sidewalk
under the moonlike lamplight thinking how precious moss is
so unique and greenly crushable if you can find it
on the north side of the tree where the fog binds you
and then, tearing apart into soft white lies, spreads its disease
through the primal night of an everlasting winter
which nevertheless has heat in tubes, west-side and east-side
and its intricate individual pathways of white accompanied
by the ringing of telephone bells beside which someone sits in
silence denying their own number, never given out ! nameless
like the sound of troika bells rushing past suffering
in the first storm, it is snowing now, it is already too late
the snow will go away, but nobody will be there

police cordons for lying political dignitaries ringing too
the world becomes a jangle

from the index finger
to the vast empty houses filled with people, their echoes

43

of lies and the tendrils of fog trailing softly around their throats
now the phone can be answered, nobody calling, only an echo
all can confess to be home and waiting, all is the same
and we drift into the clear sky enthralled by our disappointment
never to be alone again

never to be loved
sailing through space : didn't I have you once for my self?

West Side?
for a couple of hours, but I am not that person

1960

44

A LITTLE TRAVEL DIARY

Wending our way through the gambas, angulas,
the merluzas that taste like the Sea Post on Sunday
and the great quantities of huevos they take off
Spanish Naval officers' uniforms and put on plates,
and reach the gare de Francia in the gloaming
with my ton of books and John's ton of clothes bought
in a wild fit of enthusiasm in Madrid; all jumbled
together like life is a Jumble Shop

of the theatre
in Spain they said nothing for foreigners
and we head in our lovely 1st class coach, shifting
and sagging, towards the northwest, while in other compartments
Dietrich and Erich von Stroheim share a sandwich of chorizos
and a bottle of Vichy Catalan, in the dining car
the travelling gentleman with linear mustache and many
many rings rolls his cigar around and drinks Martini y
ginebra, and Lillian Gish rolls on over the gorges
with a tear in her left front eye, comme Picasso,
through the night through the night, longitudinous
and affected with stars ; the riverbeds so far below look
as a pig's tongue on a platter, and storms break over
San Sebastian, 40 foot waves drench us pleasantly and we see
a dead dog bloated as a fraise lolling beside the quai
and slowly pulling out to sea

to Irun and Biarritz
we go, sapped of anxiety, and there for the first time
since arriving in Barcelona I can freely shit
and the surf is so high and the sun is so hot
and it was all built yesterday as everything should be

45

what a splendid country it is

full of indecision and cognac
and bikinis, sens plastiques (ugh ! hooray !); see the back
of the head of Bill Berkson, aux Deux Magots, (awk !) it gleams
like the moon through the smoke of the Renfe as we passed
through the endless tunnels and the silver vistas
of our quest for the rocher de la Vierge and salt spray

1960

46

FIVE POEMS

Well now, hold on

maybe I won't go to sleep at all

and it'll be a beautiful white night

or else I'll collapse

completely from nerves and be calm

as a rug or a bottle of pills

or suddenly I'll be off Montauk

swimming and loving it and not caring where

an invitation to lunch

HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?

when I only have 16 cents and 2

packages of yoghurt

there's a lesson in that, isn't there

like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls?

hold off on the yoghurt till the very

last, when everything may improve

at the Rond-Point they were eating

a oyster, but here

we were dropping by sculptures

and seeing some paintings

and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret

and music by Varese, too

well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you

47

are the hero of this day
along with venison and Bill

I'll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf

which I did it was wonderful

to be in bed again and the knock

on my door for once signified "hi there"

and on the deafening walk

through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately

left by subway violators

I knew why I love taxis, yes

subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy

and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel

well maybe a little bit

I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it ?

1960

48

AVE MARIA

Mothers of America

let your kids go to the movies !
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body

but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must

they won't hate you
they won't criticise you they won't know

they'll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you

for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter

and didn't upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from

and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the

Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge

oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference

and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard

or up in their room

hating you

49

prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly

mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys

it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this advice

and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set

seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young

1960

50

PISTACHIO TREE AT CHATEAU NOIR

Beaucoup de musique classique et moderne Guillaume and not

as one may imagine it sounds not in the ear

what went was attributed to wandering aimlessly off

what came arrived simply for itself and inflamed me

yet I do not explain what exactly makes me so happy today

any more than I can explain the unseasonal warmth

of my unhabitual heart pumping vulgarly the blood

of another I loved another and now my love is other

my love is in the movies downstairs and yesterday

bought ice cream and looked for a pigeon-menaced owl

mais, Guillaume, ou es-tu, Guillaume, comme les musiques

and like the set for Rigoletto like the set for Roma
like so many sets one's heart is torn like Berman's
spacious haunt where tenors walk in pumps and girls
in great big hats or none at all "or perhaps he recorded
the panorama of hills and valleys before the strangely
naked" and rain is turning the set into a dumpling

wherever I see a "while" I seem to lose a little time
and gradually my feet dragging I slow down the damn bus
it is because of you so I can watch you smile longer
that's what the Spring is and the elbow of noon walks
where did you go who did you see the children proclaim
and they too gradually fill the sepulchre with dolls
and the sepulchre jumps and jounces and turns pink with wrath

1961

51

AT KAMIN'S DANCE BOOKSHOP

to Vincent Warren

Shade of Fanny Elssler ! I dreamt that you passed over me last

night in sleep
was it you who was asleep or was it me ? sweet shade
shade shade shill spade agony freak
geek you were not nor were you made of ribbons but of warm

moving flesh & tulle
you were twining your left leg around your right as if your

right were me
I've never felt so wide awake
I seemed to be wearing tights entwined with your legs and a

big sash over my crotch
and a jewel in my left ear for luck
(to help me balance) and you were pulling me toward the floor

reaching for stars
it seemed to me that I was warm at last
and palpable not just a skein of lust dipped in the grand

appreciation of yours
where are you Fanny Elssler come back !

1%1

52

STEPS

How funny you are today New York

like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime

and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days

(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still

accepts me foolish and free

all I want is a room up there

and you in it

and even the traffic halt so thick is a way

for people to rub up against each other

and when their surgical appliances lock

they stay together

for the rest of the day (what a day)

I go by to check a slide and I say

that painting's not so blue

where's Lana Turner

she's out eating

and Garbo's backstage at the Met

everyone's taking their coat off

so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers

and the park's full of dancers and their tights and shoes

in little bags

who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y

why not

the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won

and in a sense we're all winning

we're alive

53

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple

who moved to the country for fun

they moved a day too soon

even the stabbings are helping the population explosion

though in the wrong country

and all those liars have left the U N

the Seagram Building's no longer rivalled in interest

not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk

next to the delicatessen

so the old man can sit on it and drink beer

and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day

while the sun is still shining

oh god it's wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so much

1961

54

MARY DESTI'S ASS

In Bayreuth once

we were very good friends of the Wagners

and I stepped in once

for Isadora so perfectly

she would never allow me to dance again

that's the way it was in Bayreuth

the way it was in Hackensack

was different

there one never did anything

and everyone hated you anyway

it was fun, it was clear

you knew where you stood

in Boston you were never really standing

I was usually lying

it was amusing to be lying all

the time for everybody

it was like exercise

it means something to exercise

in Norfolk Virginia

it means you've been to bed with a Nigra

well it is exercise

the only difference is it's better than Boston

55

I was walking along the street
of Cincinnati

and I met Kenneth Koch's mother
fresh from the Istanbul Hilton
she liked me and I liked her
we both liked Istanbul

then in Waukegan I met a furniture manufacturer

and it wiped out all dreams of pleasantness from my mind

it was like being pushed down hard

on a chair

it was like something horrible you hadn't expected

which is the most horrible thing

and in Singapore I got a dreadful
disease it was amusing to have bumps
except they went into my veins
and rose to the surface like Vesuvius
getting cured was like learning to smoke

yet I always loved Baltimore
the porches which hurt your ass
no, they were the steps
well you have a wet ass anyway
if they'd only stop scrubbing

and Frisco where I saw

Toumanova "the baby ballerina" except

she looked like a cow

I didn't know the history of the ballet yet

not that that taught me much

56

now if you feel like you want to deal with

Tokyo

you've really got something to handle

it's like Times Square at midnight

you don't know where you're going

but you know

and then in Harbin I knew

how to behave it was glorious that

was love sneaking up on me through the snow

and I felt it was because of all

the postcards and the smiles and kisses and the grunts

that was love but I kept on traveling

1961

57
ST. PAUL AND ALL THAT

Totally abashed and smiling

I walk in
sit down and
face the frigidaire

it's April

no May

it's May

such little things have to be established in morning
after the big things of night

do you want me to come ? when
I think of all the things I've been thinking of I feel insane
simply "life in Birmingham is hell"

simply "you will miss me
but that's good"
when the tears of a whole generation are assembled
they will only fill a coflfee cup

just because they evaporate
doesn't mean life has heat

"this various dream of living"
I am alive with you

full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety
hardness and softness

listening while you talk and talking while you read
I read what you read

you do not read what I read
which is right, I am the one with the curiosity
you read for some mysterious reason

I read simply because I am a writer
the sun doesn't necessarily set, sometimes it just disappears

58

when you're not here someone walks in and says

"hey,
there's no dancer in that bed"

O the Polish summers ! those drafts !
those black and white teeth !
you never come when you say you'll come but on the other hand

you do come
1961

59

MEMOIR OF SERGEI O. . . .

My feet have never been comfortable
since I pulled them out of the Black Sea
and came to your foul country
what fatal day did I dry them off for
travel loathesome travel to a world
even older than the one I grew up in
what fatal day meanwhile back in France
they were stumbling towards the Bastille
and the Princesse de Lamballe was
shuddering as shudderingly as I
with a lot less to lose I still hated
to move sedentary as a roach of Tiflis
never again to go swimming in the nude
publicly little did I know how
awfulness could reach perfection abroad
I even thought I would see a Red Indian
all I saw was lipstick everything cov-
ered with grass or shrouds pretty
shrouds shot with silver and plasma
even the chairs are upholstered to a
smothering perfection of inanity
and there are no chandeliers and there
are no gates to the parks so you don't
know whether you're going in them or
coming out of them that's not relaxing
and so you can't really walk all you can
do is sit and drink coffee and brood
over the lost leaves and refreshing scum
of Georgia Georgia of my heritage
and dismay meanwhile back in my old

60

country they are renaming everything so
I can't even tell any more which ballet
company I am remembering with so much
pain and the same thing has started
here American Avenue Park Avenue South
Avenue of Chester Conklin Binnie Barnes
Boulevard Avenue of Toby Wing Barbara
Nichols Street w here am I what is it
I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
you are ruining your awful country- and me
it is not new to do this it is terribly
democratic and ordinary and tired

1961

61
YESTERDAY DOWN AT THE CANAL

You say that everything is very simple and interesting

it makes me feel very wistful, like reading a great Russian novel

does
I am terribly bored
sometimes it is like seeing a bad movie
other days, more often, it's like having an acute disease of the

kidney
god knows it has nothing to do with the heart
nothing to do with people more interesting than myself
yak yak

that's an amusing thought
how can anyone be more amusing than oneself
how can anyone fail to be
can I borrow your forty-five
I only need one bullet preferably silver
if you can't be interesting at least you can be a legend
(but I hate all that crap)

1961

62

POEM EN FORME DE SAW

I ducked out of sight behind the saw-mill

nobody saw me because of the falls the gates the sluice the

tourist boats
the children were trailing their fingers in the water
and the swans, regal and smarty, were nipping their "little"

fingers
I heard one swan remark "That was a good nip
though they are not as interesting as sausages" and another
reply "Nor as tasty as those peasants we got away from the

elephant that time"
but I didn't really care for conversation that day
I wanted to be alone

which is why I went to the mill in the first place
now I am alone and hate it

I don't want to just make boards for the rest of my life
I'm distressed

the water is very beautiful but you can't go into it
because of the gunk

and the dog is always rolling over, I like dogs on their "little" feet
I think I may scamper off to Winnipeg to see Raymond
but what'll happen to the mill
I see the cobwebs collecting already
and later those other webs, those awful predatory webs
if I stay right here I will eventually get into the newspapers
like Robert Frost

willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind me of

nothing
I'm so damned empty
what is all this vessel shit anyway
we are all rushing down the River Happy Times

63

ducking poling bumping sinking and swimming

and we arrive at the beach

the chaff is sand

alone as a tree bumping another tree in a storm

that's not really being alone, is it, signed The Saw

1961

64

FOR THE CHINESE NEW YEAR
& FOR BILL BERKSON

One or another
Is lost, since we fall apart
Endlessly, in one motion depart
From each other.
— D. H. Lawrence

Behind New York there's a face
and it's not Sibelius's with a cigar
it was red it was strange and hateful
and then I became a child again
like a nadir or a zenith or a nudnik

what do you think this is my youth

and the aged future that is sweeping me away

earless and gasless under the Sutton

and Beekman Places towards a hellish rage

it is there that face I fear under ramps

it is perhaps the period that ends

the problem as a proposition of days of days

just an attack on the feelings that stay

poised in the hurricane's center that

eye through which only camels can pass

but I do not mean that tenderness doesn't
linger like a Paris afternoon or a wart
something dumb and despicable that I love
because it is silent oh what difference
does it make me into some kind of space statistic

65

a lot is buried under that smile

a lot of sophistication gone down the drain

to become the mesh of a mythical fish

at which we never stare back never stare back

where there is so much downright forgery

under that I find it restful like a bush
some people are outraged by cleanliness
I hate the lack of smells myself and yet I stay
it is better than being actually present
and the stare can swim away into the past

can adorn it with easy convictions rat
cow tiger rabbit dragon snake horse sheep
monkey rooster dog and pig "Flower Drum Song"
so that nothing is vain not the gelded sand
not the old spangled lotus not my fly

which I have thought about but never really
looked at well that's a certain orderliness
of personality "if you're brought up Protestant
enough a Catholic" oh shit on the beaches so
what if I did look up your trunks and see it

II

then the parallel becomes an eagle parade
of Busby Berkeleyites marching marching half-toe
I suppose it's the happiest moment in infinity
because we're dissipated and tired and fond no
I don't think psychoanalysis shrinks the spleen

66

here we are and what the hell are we going to do
with it we are going to blow it up like daddy did
only us I really think we should go up for a change
I'm tired of always going down what price glory
it's one of those timeless priceless words like come

well now how does your conscience feel about that
would you rather explore tomorrow with a sponge
there's no need to look for a target you're it
like in childhood when the going was aimed at a
sandwich it all depends on which three of us are there

but here come the prophets with their loosening nails
it is only as blue as the lighting under the piles
I have something portentous to say to you but which
of the papier-mache languages do you understand you
don't dare to take it off paper much less put it on

yes it is strange that everyone fucks and every-
one mentions it and it's boring too that faded floor
how many teeth have chewed a little piece of the lover's
flesh how many teeth are there in the world it's like
Harpo Marx smiling at a million pianos call that Africa

call it New Guinea call it Poughkeepsie I guess

it's love I guess the season of renunciation is at "hand"

the final fatal hour of turpitude and logic demise

is when you miss getting rid of something delouse

is when you don't louse something up which way is the inn

67

III

I'm looking for a million-dollar heart in a carton

of frozen strawberries like the Swedes where is sunny England

and those fields where they still-birth the wars why

did they suddenly stop playing why is Venice a Summer

Festival and not New York were you born in America

the inscrutable passage of a lawn-mower punctuates
the newly installed Muzack in the Shubert Theatre am I nuts
or is this the happiest moment of my life who's arguing it's
I mean 'tis lawd sakes it took daddy a long time to have
that accident so Ant Grace could get completely into black

didn't you know we was all going to be Zen Buddhists after
what we did you sure don't know much about war-guilt
or nothin and the peach trees continued to rejoice around
the prick which was for once authorized by our Congress
though inactive what if it had turned out to be a volcano

that's a mulatto of another nationality of marble
it's time for dessert I don't care what street this is
you're not telling me to take a tour are you
1 don't want to look at any fingernails or any toes
I just want to go on being subtle and dead like life

I'm not naturally so detached but I think

they might send me up any minute so I try to be free

you know we've all sinned a lot against science

so we really ought to be available as an apple on a bough

pleasant thought fresh air free love cross-pollenization

68

oh oh god how I'd love to dream let alone sleep it's night
the soft air wraps me like a swarm it's raining and I have
a cold I am a real human being with real ascendancies
and a certain amount of rapture what do you do with a kid
like me if you don't eat me I'll have to eat myself

it's a strange curse my "generation" has we're all

like the flowers in the Agassiz Museum perpetually ardent

don't touch me because when I tremble it makes a noise

like a Chinese wind-bell it's that I'm seismographic is all

and when a Jesuit has stared you down for ever after you clink

I wonder if I've really scrutinized this experience like
you're supposed to have if you can type there's not much
soup left on my sleeve energy creativity guts ponderableness
lent is coming in imponderableness "I'd like to die smiling" ugh
and a very small tiptoe is crossing the threshold away

whither Lumumba whither oh whither Gauguin
I have often tried to say goodbye to strange fantoms I
read about in the newspapers and have always succeeded
though the ones at "home" are dependent on Dependable
Laboratory and Sales Company on Pulaski Street strange

I think it's goodbye to a lot of things like Christmas

and the Mediterranean and halos and meteorites and villages

full of damned children well it's goodbye then as in Strauss

or some other desperately theatrical venture it's goodbye

to lunch to love to evil things and to the ultimate good as "well"

69

the strange career of a personality begins at five and ends
forty minutes later in a fog the rest is just a lot of stranded
ships honking their horns full of joy-seeking cadets in bloomers
and beards it's okay with me but must they cheer while they honk
it seems that breath could easily fill a balloon and drift away

scaring the locusts in the straggling grey of living dumo
exertions then the useful noise would come of doom of data
turned to elegant decoration like a strangling prince once ordered
no there is no precedent of history no history nobody came before
nobody will ever come before and nobody ever was that man

you will not die not knowing this is true this year

1961

70

POEM

Lana Turner has collapsed !

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED 1

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

1962

71

GALANTA

A Strange den or music room

childhood
dream of Persian grass configured distilled
first hardon milky mess

the about-to-be
dead surrounding the already surrounded folk-
hero with a veil of automobile accidents
broken cocktail glasses

oh Sally
is still acting the mise en scene of her
great grandmother's embroidered graveyard
while I

my asiatic tendencies have taken me
to the Baghdad of neurasthenia and
false objectivity

faint hope for a familial
contrast for a far-reaching decadence
which presupposes unnatural unselfishness
your sweet yellow hair

among the mosques
the faint tribal twitch of your altered
blue eyes

when Canaan was reached you
called me France we threw sand in our eyes
and ran naked

down the street of our awful
progenitors

when life is fantastic there
is no chance for make-believe how lucky
the French bourgeois pain

72

could be if we
were children again and ever^-thing uninteresting
you never had a chance to be

Emma Bovary-
nor I Julien Sorel in that attic in the States
and now

I remember you only through American
Folk Art opening near the Fonda del Sol
where are you Sally with your practicality
and bottles of fireflies

blinking on
and oflF for footlights

1962

73
FANTASY

{dedicated to the health of Allen Ginsberg)

How do you like the music of Adolph

Deutsch? I like
it, I like it better than Max Steiner's. Take his
score for Northern Pursuit, the Helmut Dantyne theme
was . . .

and then the window fell on my hand. Errol
Flynn was skiing by. Down

down down went the grim
grey submarine under the "cold" ice.

Helmut was
safely ashore, on the ice.

What dreams, what incredible
fantasies of snow farts will this all lead to?

I
don't know, I have stopped thinking like a sled dog.

The main thing is to tell a story.

It is almost
very important. Imagine

throwing away the avalanche
so early in the movie. I am the only spy left
in Canada,

but just because I'm alone in the snow
doesn't necessarily mean I'm a Nazi.

Let's see,
two aspirins a vitamin G tablet and some baking soda
should do the trick, that's practically an

Alka

74

Seltzer. Allen come out of the bathroom

and take it.
I think someone put butter on my skis instead
of wax.

Ouch. The leanto is falling over in the
firs, and there is another fatter spy here. They
didn't tell me they sent

him. Well, that takes care
of him, boy were those huskies hungry.

Allen,
are you feeling any better? Yes, I'm crazy about
Helmut Dantyne

but I'm glad that Canada will remain
free. Just free, that's all, never argue with the movies.

1964

CITY LIGHTS PUBLICATIONS

Antler. FACTORY (Pocket Poets n38)

Artaud, Antonin. ANTHOLOGY

Baudelaire, Charles. INTIMATE JOURNALS

Bowles, Paul. A HUNDRED CAMELS IN THE COURTYARD

Brea, Juan Sc Maiy Low. RED SPANISH NOTEBOOK

Brecht, Stefan. POEMS (Pocket Poets U36)

Broughton, James. SEEING THE LIGHT

Buckley, Lord. HIPARAMA OF THE CLASSICS

Bukowski, Charles. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

IN TOWN
Bukowski, Charles. NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN
Bukowski, Charles. SHAKESPEARE NEVER DID THIS
Bukowski, Charles. TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS
Burroughs, William S. THE BURROUGHS FILE
Burroughs, William S. ROOSEVELT AFTER

INAUGURATION
Burroughs, W.S. Sc Allen Ginsberg. THE YAGE LETTERS
Cassady, Neal. THE FIRST THIRD
CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL No. 4
Codrescu, Andrei. IN AMERICA'S SHOES
Corso, Gregory. GASOLINE /VESTAL LADY ON BRATTLE

(Pocket Poets U8)
David Neel, Alexandia. SECRET ORAL TEACHINGS IN

TIBETAN BUDDHIST SECTS
Di Prima, Diane. REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS
Doolittle, Hilda. (H.D.) NOTES ON THOUGHT & VISION
Duncan, Isadora. ISADORA SPEAKS
Eberhardt, Isabelle. THE OBLIVION SEEKERS
Fenollosa, Ernest. THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER

AS A MEDIUM FOR POETRY
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. PICTURES OF THE GONE WORLD

(Pocket Poets UI)
FREE SPIRITS: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination

Gascovne, Da\id. A SHORT SURVEY OF SURREALISM

Ginsberg, Allen. THE FALL OF AMERICA (Pocket Poets UBO)

Ginsberg, Allen. HOWL & OTHER POEMS (Pocket Poets M)

Ginsberg, Allen. INDIAN JOURNALS

Ginsberg. Allen. IRON HORSE

Ginsberg, Allen. KADDISH if OTHER POEMS

(Pocket Poets UH)
Ginsberg, Allen. MIND BREATHS (Pocket Poets #55j
Gnisberg, Allen. PLANET NEWS (Pocket Poets n23)
Ginsberg, Allen. PLUTONIAN ODE (Pocket Poets U40)
Ginsberg, Allen. REALITY SANDWICHES (Pocket Poets ni8)
Hirschman, Jack. LYRIPOL (Pocket Poets n34)
Horowitz, Michael. BIG LEAGUE POETS
JOURNAL FOR THE PROTECTION OF ALL BEINGS No. 4
Kerouac, Jack. BOOK OF DREAMS
Kerouac, Jack. SCATTERED POEMS (Pocket Poets n28)
Lamantia, Philip. BECOMING VISIBLE (Pocket Poets U39)
Lamantia, Philip. SELECTED POEMS (Pocket Poets U20)
Laughlin, James. IN ANOTHER COUNTRY
Lowrv, Malcolm. SELECTED POEMS (Pocket Poets UI7)
Lucebert. NINE DUTCH POETS (Pocket Poets n42)
Ludlow, Fitzhugh. THE HASHEESH EATER
McDonough, Kave. ZELDA
Moore, Daniel. BURNT HEART
Mrabet,^ Mohammed.^M'HASHISH
Miirguia, A. VOLCAN: Poems from Central America
Newton, Huey &: Ericka Huggins. INSIGHTS & POEMS
O'Haia, Frank. LUNCH POEMS (Pocket Poets ni9)
Olson, Charles. CALL ME ISHMAEL
Orloxskv, Peter. CLEAN ASSHOLE POEMS t SMILING

VEGETABLE SONGS (Pocket Poets n37)
Patchen, Kenneth. LOVE POEMS (Pocket Poets UI3)
Patchen, Kenneth. POEMS OF HUMOR 6- PROTEST

(Pocket Poets n3)
Pickard, Tom. GUTTERSNIPE

Plymell, Charles. THE LAST OF THE MOCCASINS
Poe, Edgar Allan. THE UNKNOWN FOE
Prevert, Jacques. FAROLES (Focket Foets n9)
Rips, Geoffrey. UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES
Rosemont, Franklin. SURREALISM ir ITS

FOFULAR ACCOMFLICES
Sanders, Ed. INVESTIGATIVE FOETRY
Shepaid, Sam. FOOL FOR LOVE
Shepaid, Sam. MOTEL CHRONICLES
Snyder, Gary. THE OLD WAYS
Solomon, Carl. MISHAFS FERHAFS
Solomon, Carl. MORE MISHAFS
Svevo, Italo. JAMES JOYCE

Upton, Charles. FANIC GRASS (Focket Foets U24)
Voznesenskv, Andrei. DOGALYFSE (Focket Foets n29)
Waldman, Anne. FAST SFEAKING WOMAN (Focket Foets U33)
Waley, Arthur. THE NINE SONGS
Yevtushenko, Yevgeni. RED CATS (Focket Foets ni6)

Often this poet, strolling through the noisy
splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has
paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty
or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering
more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware-
or firehouse to limn his computed misunder-
standings of the eternal questions of life,
co-existence and depth, while never forgetting
to eat Lunch his favorite meal. . . .

ISBN: D-fl7Eflb-D35-3

$3.^5